Introduction Page
This is a history of the Windsor Schools in Hamm, West Germany, run by the British Families Education Service. The school started in 1953 as a mixed secondary boarding school; in 1959 the school divided into boys’ and girls’ schools. In 1981 they remerged and closed in 1983. They were schools of the Cold War.
The emphasis in that opening sentence is “a history.” Around 16,000 pupils, over 900 teachers and several thousand administrative and ancillary workers engaged with the schools. For some it was only a few weeks; for others over 20 years, for a few nearly 30 years. Most pupils and teachers were British. Americans, Maltese, Canadians, Indians, Jamaicans, Pakistanis, and many other nationalities played a part. Most of the administration and ancillary employees were German. Every one of the 20,000+ people will have their own memories and view of their time at Hamm. A single volume cannot hope to capture all their moments, all their memories and emotions or all their views. At best it can try to record and analyse key events, activities, and people.
The story of the schools covers a wide spectrum. The internal life of a boarding school, with a close relationship both with the British military in West Germany and the city of Hamm, dominates. The schools were not immune from the fluctuating Anglo-German relations during the post-war Allied occupation and then NATO partnership. Britain´s wavering economic fortunes and military strategies played their part. At their core the schools, along with the other BFES schools, were an element of the Armed Forces recruit and retain policy during the Cold War.
The period from the early 1950s to the early 1980s saw considerable changes in society and its culture. It might be a time worn expression but L. P. Hartley´s well-known sentence is apt nonetheless: “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” Historians of the period, Peter Hennessey, David Kynaston, Andy Beckett, and Dominic Sandbrook highlight the changes in British society from a time of deference through the “Swinging Sixties” up to the more individualistic 1980s. The schools reflected these changes.
Boarding schools hold a special place, not always positive, in the British way of life. Books, television series and films have given readers and audiences a multiplicity of views. “Tom Brown’s Schooldays” (1857) introduced the basic building blocks of being away from home and parents; the rough and tumble of life (Flashman the bully) and the sporting prowess to success. Above all the Rugby School of the time brought out the development of a true Victorian Muscular Christian gentleman. “Goodbye Mr Chips” looks at a school over time, before, during and after the First World War, through the eyes of a teacher from his naïve inexperienced start to the fondly remembered mentor of many pupils over the years. The exploits of “Billy Bunter” highlight the humour and comradeship inherent in boarding. “If…, the Lindsay Anderson film, takes a decidedly negative stance with its anarchic and subversive approach to hierarchy, discipline, petty rules, and resistance to change. It is noticeable that all of these were boy´s schools. Girl´s boarding schools were less common but as the “St Trinians” books and films show girls could be just as naughty, imaginative, subversive, and bold as any boy’s school. Life in girl´s boarding schools, especially in “prep” schools, was recently covered in “Terms and Conditions. Life in Girls ‘Boarding Schools 1939–79’ by Ysenda Maxtone Graham. In the last twenty years or so books have featured what might be termed the “dark side” of boarding schools. The issue of “boarding school syndrome” has been put forward, reflecting the long term psychological effects of boarding. More books have covered sexual abuse, others the influence Public Schools have on public life and politics.
The global phenomenon of J K Rowling’s Harry Potter saga has brought the British boarding school to a whole new audience. Hogwarts with its benevolent but firm Headmaster, the friendly, and sometimes not so friendly, teachers, the rivalry between the houses (and indeed the concept of houses) and the importance of sporting success at Quidditch brings together in a magical setting many of the inherent aspects of boarding schools. It was not just for jumping on a bandwagon that academics contributed to “Harry Potter and International Relations,” using the stories to explore identity, international sport, educational theories and many other topics.
The literary world exaggerates, dramatizes, and invents for its effect. But throughout the wide range of novels, plays and films, elements of reality can be discerned. The 20,000 plus people associated with the Windsor Schools can see through the literary conceits. Many pupils became grateful for the inspirational teacher who steered them towards their career, their personal development, and their outlook on life. Others, a minority, can recall the over-strict teacher, petty regulations, or the bullies. Teachers who overlapped for only a few years of their careers hold reunions decades later. Alumni societies have existed in the UK, Australia, Canada, and USA. Even today, four decades since the school closed, Facebook hosts six, closed, groups with well over a thousand active members.
The literary world of boarding schools provides a guide to the concept and structure of a boarding school. They differ in many respects from the normal “day” school. Boarding schools are a closed community, physically and often emotionally. The buildings are almost always old. “Exeats”, permission to leave the school premises, are tightly controlled. Pupils, in our case from 11 to 18, are away from home and their parents. Teachers, and matrons, have a pastoral as well as academic function. They operate on a 24-hour cycle: classes may end around 4 in the afternoon but the school life continues; there is no respite nor privacy. A school’s ethical and moral culture is given high importance; religion (or at least the chapels) plays a more visible role than in day schools. Sporting prowess is admired, at times even more than academic success. Pupils live in “houses”: defined physical areas under the leadership of a housemistress/housemaster (a senior teacher) with a matron in charge of housekeeping. Houses compete incessantly, at sports and at various competitions invented for the purpose. Loyalty is often stronger to the house than to the school, certainly within the school itself. Inside the house pupils live in the “dorm”: dormitories. From eight to ten sharing in the junior year and gradually becoming less crowded as the pupil moves through the ages until at the senior levels often a dorm of just two and in rarer cases a single room. Washing facilities are shared. Discipline and rules are mostly unwritten but defined and controlled. There is a hierarchy of punishments, and an associated hierarchy of who can administer them. Senior pupils are given responsibility, again in a hierarchy. There are two grades, monitor (or assistant) and prefect again at two levels, house and school. Above them with varying responsibilities are the Head Girls and Head Boys of houses and of the school.
The schools functioned in four areas. The academic covered subjects to be taught, their levels and examinations. The senior mistress/master or the deputy headmistress/master took the lead role with the heads of subject departments. The pastoral function was led by the house mistresses/masters, supported by assigned duty teaching staff, with the matron as the housekeeping lead. Chaplains played their part. The social side of the school was covered by sports and by a wide range of groups and societies turning hobbies into formalised activity. The administrative function of the school is often overlooked despite it employing the most people. Led by the bursar, the administrative and ancillary staff covered a wide range of tasks from the offices, supplies, catering, cleaning, the sick bays, the upkeep of the sports fields and buildings, and the tuck shop.
The idea of boarding schools and school education in general were, during the lifetime of the Windsor Schools, a subject of intense debate. Overwhelmingly boarding schools were outside the state education system. They were private, parents paying an often very high fee, and in a term often misleading for many, called “Public Schools”. Their alumni occupied a disproportionate ratio of senior roles in politics, in the civil and diplomatic services, the judiciary and the media. (Even in the 2020s they still maintain this position). Pupils were at the schools for the status they bestowed, for the contacts and the “attitude.” It was a “career choice” made for them by their parents.
The Windsor Schools were different. Pupils were there simply as a side-effect of their fathers´ (rarely their mothers´) occupation. Attendance became compulsory if there was no suitable day school close enough to their father’s military base in West Germany and some neighbouring countries (and for most it was prohibitively expensive to send children to UK Public Schools)
In the mid-1960s boarding schools were intensively reviewed by Royston Lambert of Kings College, Cambridge. His most famous and influential study, “The Hothouse Society”, was the first to look at schools from the pupils’ perspective. He and his team visited 66 boarding schools in the UK, listening to pupils not staff. He later visited the Hamm schools Regretfully he did not include his evidence from Hamm in the book. His sociological approach to boarding education throws a sharp light many aspects; it has been influential in the writing of this book, notably by using pupils´ own words.
Royal Commissions, considerable review literature and political arguments ranged over the public school arena. In parallel the education sector was wrestling with the ground-breaking 1944 Education Act. It did not specify a particular form of secondary school but local authorities introduced a three-tier system of secondary education from age 11 to, initially, 15 (Grammar, Modern and Technical). Educationalists and politicians were proposing (and opposing) a new system before this structure had settled down. In practice it became a two tier system as relatively few technical schools were built. The 1960s saw a move towards the “comprehensive” system with all three streams in one, larger, school with the famous Department of Education Circular 10/65. The Windsor Schools (along with the two other BFES boarding schools, Prince Rupert in Wilhelmshaven and King Alfred in Plön) found themselves early pioneers in this comprehensive format.
The schools had external and interlocking factors to contend with. The high level geo-political context impacted on the schools in various ways. When the school opened in 1953 the UK was still an occupation power over Germany, with extensive authority. The British Families Education Service, formed in 1946 and responsible for the schooling of children of Service personnel in West Germany, and already running two secondary boarding schools in West Germany, was expanding. Its expenditure in Deutsche Marks was paid from “occupation funds” from the German government. From 1955 the British military role changed to being an invited member of a NATO partner. A consequence was the slow phasing out of the occupation funds giving a financial headache to the British government, the military in Germany and to the BFES schools.
The UK itself, despite a growing economy from the mid-1950s, (although nowhere near as fast as the German economy) was in serious economic trouble for most of the period of the school’s history. There was a chronic shortage of foreign exchange. Successive reviews of the military, as the Cold War developed and military strategy and tactics evolved, resulted in a common thread: a reduction and rationalisation of troops and airfields. These strategic decisions wound their way to impact on the schools. In the end they contributed (but were not the final reason) to the closure of the schools.
Most of the primary records of the schools have disappeared. No daily log books at school or house level (just a single one for the primary school) and only a couple of BFES annual reports. Two long out of print books cover the organisational history: Lt Col St John Williams, a former senior officer in the Army Education Service, in Tommy Atkins´ Children (1971), covers worldwide schooling for army children from 1675 to 1870. More recently in 2008, Paul Macardle wrote The History of Service Children´s Education in Germany 1947–2007. Both are very useful for the administrative background and context to BFES. The online availability of Cabinet papers and Mrs Thatcher’s papers enables an updating of both books. The alumni association of Prince Rupert School published an excellent history of their school, mostly though the recollections of alumni. Now also unavailable. Most of the books on BAOR focus on the military and geo-political aspects. The best coverage of the life of troops, families and children in BAOR is in Roy Bainton´s The Long Patrol (2003) which includes a chapter on children, including memories of one former Windsor pupil in the 1950s.
I have made extensive use of the school magazines, Concordia and Ambassador, various school pamphlets and recollections from former pupils and staff. There is a guide to the main sources at the end. I dislike footnotes in non-academic books!
This book is in two parts. Part A is a narrative story of the schools. The opening chapter poses the core question: why did British children in West Germany need schools? The following chapter looks at the formation of the British Families Education Service, the opening of the first two boarding schools and the decision to open Windsor School. Chapter 3 covers the preparations prior to the opening of the school in November 1953 and takes us back to the 1930s German re-armament. Subsequent chapters take roughly a decade each and are marked by the changing headmistresses and headmasters who had a considerable degree of autonomy within the schools. In Chapters 4 to 6 we see the operation of the school, which served as a template for the remainder of the schools’ history. Chapter 7 looks at the division into two schools in 1959, Windsor Boys´ School and Windsor Girls´ School. Chapters 7 to 11 continue the story of the two schools though the 1960s and 1970s to their remerger in 1981 and closure in 1983.
Part B takes a different approach. It is a series of self-contained thematic chapters and does not need to be read sequentially. It is more granular, exploring themes in detail. The final chapter offers some reflections.
A note on style and language; both have changed since the school closed in 1983, let alone from its opening in 1953. I have used the styles of the period: headmistress and headmaster not head teacher (and certainly not the terrible CEO now in vogue in schools), pupils not students. Teachers are Miss, Mrs and Mr.
I have been helped in writing this history by many former pupils and teachers. I list them in the acknowledgements; I hope I have not omitted or misrepresented anyone in error. To all of them I record my thanks.
